


A Study In Pumpkin Spice (and Muffins)

by paperclipbitch



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen, i love these guys so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2507276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They met in a bar the first couple of times, awkward around each other and trying not to talk about the person that tangled them all together in the first place, because this was supposed to be what Marcus called a <i>sanctuary</i> and Joan laughed and considered it and then didn’t correct him at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study In Pumpkin Spice (and Muffins)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprocket/gifts).



> For the _Trick or Treat Exchange_. My prompt was to have Joan, Bell and Alfredo hanging out without Sherlock, and I hope I've managed to do that, with bonus coffee! Sorry about the title, I couldn't resist, I am awful.

The ruse is just simple enough not to be suspicious, just boring enough not to peak Sherlock’s interests too much. Joan worked on it for a while on a caseless afternoon where Sherlock was running up and down the stairs making obnoxious amounts of noise and claiming it would help him solve a cold case from the 1800s, fine-tuning her details, editing the contacts on her cell a little.

Joan trusts Sherlock with her life and her truths, but she’s kind of tired of discovering that he’s gone through her belongings again or that he’s started using her shampoo (“to help in an olfactory experiment!” he protested, but Joan knew that he’d run out of his own over a week ago) and with her boundaries she’s more careful. She needs some space from Sherlock and all that he represents, but she doesn’t always want that space with concerned friends who want to check that she’s not getting herself in way too deep – kind of too late for that – or with someone she’s trying to date. Sometimes she just wants to spend a little while in a world a step to the left of the one she usually inhabits, one where she can define herself as herself, without her all-encompassing partner.

“You’re late,” Alfredo remarks easily, as Joan slides into their usual booth, fallen leaves clinging to her boots. 

Joan rolls her eyes, leaving a heap of half-conversations unmentioned, waving a coffee appointment that she put into her phone weeks ago at Sherlock. She hasn’t mentioned who it’s with, and she laid the groundwork long enough ago that Sherlock scoffs and doesn’t ask anymore. 

“Coffee’s getting cold,” Marcus adds, shifting his coat to make space for Joan. 

Joan picks up the mug waiting for her, and knows without having to smell it that they’ve ordered her pumpkin spice. It’s not her deductive reasoning powers at work so much as the fact she _knows_ they love the way her nose can’t help but crinkle at the overabundance of cinnamon and nutmeg smothered on the top. This place does good coffee, but once you start messing around with the basic formula, they can get a little overenthusiastic and therefore not that great.

They met in a bar the first couple of times, awkward around each other and trying not to talk about the person that tangled them all together in the first place, because this was supposed to be what Marcus called a _sanctuary_ and Joan laughed and considered it and then didn’t correct him at all. Bars were easier for a trial run: chatter all around and sports on television to fill any awkward spaces in conversation. Of course, once more comfortable around each other, they had to consider the logistics: Alfredo can’t drink, and Joan tends not to very often these days, maintaining the teetotal support system even if she isn’t technically a sober companion anymore. Marcus shrugged and said he’d go with the majority: he’s got cop friends if he ever wants to go out and drink himself under the table in a depressing bar where they all get discounts and don’t quite look each other in the eye.

Joan likes that they meet in coffee shops now; it feels more intimate, more friendly, and also people tend not to send her luridly coloured cocktails with sleazy winks across the room. Alfredo found it funny, while Marcus scowled and said that the guys trying to pick Joan up could at least have had the decency to believe that Joan was dating one or both of them.

Marcus takes his coffee black with sugar; Joan watches him add spoonfuls to his mug and with each one calculates just how long his shift was, how long his day felt in proportion. 

“Big brawl in a bar last night,” he explains, when Joan nudges his elbow with hers. “Everyone drunk and puking in the cells and too hungover to make witness statements today.”

“I was always great when waiting for bail,” Alfredo remarks with the cheerful casualness that he uses to talk about his past; no shame, no awkwardness. What’s happened has happened, and he’s got his poker chips and a regular meditation class to show for it. He’s tried to take Joan along a couple of times, and she understands his point, but she’s not yet ready to spend time in an over-warm room full of other people’s breathing trying to find some level of zen; it probably says a lot, her tight shoulders and refusal to let that much of herself slip, but Alfredo’s not trying to rehabilitate _her_ , and he just shrugged and bought her a smoothie afterwards. “Model prisoner. They used to bring me machine coffee and everything.”

“You must’ve pissed someone off to get the machine coffee,” Marcus remarks, a smirk finally rising on his mouth. “That stuff’s like punishment for something you haven’t done yet.”

“Oh, I’d definitely done something,” Alfredo responds, but it’s easy, rueful.

“I’d welcome a basic car-jacking after today,” Marcus groans, and then glances between Alfredo and Joan. “Don’t get any ideas, you two.”

“I already spend half my life making up cases to pacify people,” Joan says, “I’m not going to start doing the same for you.”

“Like I don’t have enough paperwork,” Marcus sighs, but his smile seems to have finally caught hold, and he leans back in his seat, hands wrapped around his mug. Joan discreetly slides the sugar away from him.

“I guess if you’re having to make up cases at the moment…” Alfredo trails off, but his eyes are glinting and curious.

“Ah,” Joan says, “so _that’s_ why you guys invite me along.”

“That and your accessorising,” Alfredo agrees, but his eyes are on Joan’s purse as she undoes the clasp and reaches inside.

This _did_ technically start out as a kind of support group; Joan believes in them and the good they can do, and this one isn’t to help them get past something so much as to get _through_ s. She loves Sherlock in a way that unnerves her sometimes, but it’s nice to occasionally meet up with people and blow off steam by _not talking about him_.

Of course, as a consulting detective herself these days, she’s still expected to turn up with the goods. She’d make a drug dealer reference if it weren’t in vaguely bad taste, considering her current company and all of its implications.

“Sherlock didn’t want this one,” she explains. “He says it’s because he’s solved it already, but he hasn’t, because he didn’t email the sender back to be smug about it. Missing jewellery, potentially philandering husband, either a broken keyboard or a really shaky grasp of punctuation.”

She puts the printout on the table. Marcus leans in to begin examining it, while Alfredo gets up to buy the next round of coffees.

“Anything but pumpkin spice,” Joan tells him, and he winks at her as he walks away.

“That neighbourhood’s had a lot of break-ins lately, actually,” Marcus says, tapping a line of the message with a coffee stirrer. Joan would’ve thought this stuff was too much like his day job for him to be interested, but that hasn’t turned out to be true.

The “consulting” part of consulting detective can work both ways, she’s realised, and she likes to get this chance to learn from other people, to toss ideas around and not have half of them tossed back to her on an eyeroll and a disappointed tut. She has space for this: for Alfredo sliding back into the booth with another tray of coffee and an apparent promise of muffins in a few moments, reaching to take the paper away from an engrossed Marcus so that he can read it for himself.

Not every part of Joan’s life needs to be ticking clocks and priceless antiques and mangled corpses and opera being played at three in the morning loud enough to make the walls shake, after all.


End file.
